Front Portal Fixes

I did nothing this spring with the front of the house. 

No petunias in the urn, no geraniums in the low trough. I couldn't get to the nurseries to buy them and couldn't do simple planting while I was laid up with my foot.
 

And I just didn't want to fuss with anything in the front yard. It looks spare and bare, but that's okay for this year.

Now, at the end of summer I am mobile and I am fussing with what isn't working under the pine in front. So . . .

1. I put the metal roadrunner we got in Tucson under the pines -- something to look at out the slider door.

It isn't necessary to have anything there, but it is a focal point when looking out the front slider.

It's quite small in this spot, but the eye is drawn to its odd presence. No worries about pine needles or leaves filling a birdbath or swamping a plant or a container there.

And no expense to find a piece of garden decor or sculpture. This little bird just blends in and it was something I already had and that I treasure from our trip. Meep meep.

2. I took out all the failed ajuga at the corner. It came back a little this June, but was patchy and never bloomed. All spring it was a flat brown mat. There is irrigation and it did spread at one time, but it needs much more water than it gets.

I need to stop thinking about something colorful or flowery or upright to look at. So I planted Angelina sedum where the ajuga was, to bridge the awkwardly foreshortened metal edging near the pillar. The bright golden color is all I need, and it should spread out nicely.

This is a mock up of what I hope it spreads into. I left the little gaura there, which isn't doing anything and remains a four inch stub, but I'll hold off taking it out for now.

Angelina sedum is dry loving but still needs irrigation and hose water, not what the ajugas need, though.

My Angelina sedum in Connecticut spread like crazy from one cutting. I never liked the yellow flowers and they needed to be cut back which was tedious for how much I had, but they were easy to grow and made a nice colorful mat that looked good when it turned bronzy in winter.

These modifications are subtle, nothing showy or big, nothing that says "garden". Just some softening of the edges and dry needle carpet at the front portal.

Finally Some Rain

We were gone for a week in California and while we were away it rained! After a whole summer with only half an inch total, we got a third of an inch of rain. It was much appreciated, since I had not arranged to have the big pot of bush clematis watered or the rose on the patio either. 
 

And how glorious to come home to this sight:

Even the birdbath had a little bit of clean water in it. The plants that are not near emitters got watered and while much of the garden still looks stressed from our hot dry summer, this bit of rain while we were gone was so helpful.

Late August Blooms

Just as we leave tomorrow for a week in California -- my first trip since January -- some things are blooming in the garden, despite the constant hot afternoons and the lack of any rain.

The Sapphire Indigo bush clematis has rallied remarkably since I fertilized it weeks ago and put the taller tuteur in the pot for more structure. It has deep purple blooms all over, about to open fully. 

The spindly Mexican sage is also getting ready to open up with bright scarlet flowers. It's still a small little plant and only now blooming late in the season, but it's coming along.

I won't get to see either of these bloomers. We'll be gone a week, there is no rain forecast and they'll have to get through six hot sunny afternoons. 

There's irrigation near the sage, but it doesn't do much. 

The other pretty bloomer now late in August is the Rose of Sharon. It's much better looking than last year. 

Still not densely flowered, but nice enough.

I don't have anyone coming to water the pots. I'll bring inside the smaller containers I want to keep, but the few potted annuals I have will get tossed. 

It's late in the year and I won't replace them. The tickseed in the white bowl will go, and I'll plant a nice big blue lobelia there next year, or maybe zinnias, or both.

But Angelina sedums awaiting planting and the potted red salvia and other things will spend the week in the bathtub. The two biggest pots, the bush clematis and the pink knockout rose, will be unwatered. I'll soak both the morning we leave.

And maybe it will rain while we are gone? 😎

The Far Back Fence

I removed the struggling Major Wheeler honeysuckle from the back fence. 

I cut the woody twining stems off the trellis, but did not dig up the rootball. I'll do that in the winter when the ground is softer and the sumac below it is bare.

It was lovely at first but it was in much too deep shade all day and the blooms and vigor declined. There were only a few flowers this year at the very top and it looked like nothing.

But I did love the flowers when it was doing well. How I would love to grow Major Wheeler somewhere else. But where? It needs sun to flower well, but can take some shade.

I originally put it below the railroad ties at the back fence because it was advertised to grow in some shade, but it turns out it needs more sun than it was getting.

And I originally wanted it to be a bright focal point at the far end of the yard. The Gro-Low sumac there is doing well and has spread out but it adds to the dark void of that narrow view as the eye is drawn down the yard past the deck to the shadows.

The sumac fills the space at a low level against the fence, and the neighbor's crabapple adds height above the fence. But the vine at the top of the trellis was doing nothing.

The wood trellis actually looks nice on its own with nothing growing on it.

So I won't try to plant anything else on it. I'll leave it bare, but I did arrange a few of the nearby arching sumac branches onto the lower half of it. The sumac's stems are long and almost vine-like because it grows in shade, but it does look healthy enough and it transitions from low shrub up into the trellis.

I also put the empty turquoise blue pot at the base of the trellis. It's too much of a bright accent by itself, but tucked into the sumac's surrounding branches, it's fine. It's something. I won't plant anything in it.

The emitter that watered the honeysuckle will have to be crimped off next winter. There is one under the sumac which will remain. 

The sumac branches placed on the trellis look a little awkward now, I hope they'll fill out and grow more gracefully into place as they get a little more sun at that level. Or I can move them back down to arch over the shrub.

Now the view across the deck and into the far end of the yard is quiet, just greenery and fence. The composition actually features the neighbor's tree in the distance over the fence. 

It's enough.

Hot and Smoky

It has not been a pleasant August.

There have been nice cool mornings off and on, but the afternoons are in the low 90s and it's so dry. The air runs most of the day, windows closed. This morning the smoke from wildfires is bad again and the house is closed up.

No measurable rain at all this summer, nothing since July 14 when we got half an inch after a month before that of nothing. It rained enough to wet the patio for five minutes when Greg was here on the 25th, but it was over quickly and nothing even measured in the rain gauge.

There have been sprinkles at times and daily dark cloud threats and rain all around us but localized. Nothing over us. Monsoon season has been decent, although the fire north of us still rages. But our little patch has had nothing.

I water and water daily in addition to running the irrigation four times a week. I'm keeping most things alive well enough, although several are struggling, others look grim, and the newest things planted last year and this summer haven't grown.

We go away to California in a week. We'll be gone seven days. The irrigation will run, but it doesn't keep the smaller plants moist enough and doesn't reach some vulnerable plants. The pots won't be watered for a week. 

I'm ready to give up.

Lavender and Rose of Sharon

Just as my foot was feeling more normal and I could do things outside in garden clogs comfortably, it got hot and smokey. Wildfires in the Sangre de Cristos sent smoke our way and 90+ afternoons beat down day after day. We've been staying inside all of August so far.

Usually August is the nice month, monsoon rains help and the late summer afternoons are warm but not so hot. Not this year.

When Greg was here at the end of July we got a brief 5 minute shower that wetted the patio, but we'd had nothing before that for weeks, and nothing since. The garden looks stressed.

But this morning was a little cooler and the smoke was not bad so I was able to go out and cut back the lavender in the front triangle. It has gotten big and one side of it is woody and dead, but the side facing the house is full.

I had plenty of lavender spikes after cutting, and I put them in a vase in the living room. I put little sachets in glass medicine vials in my bedroom and the guest room too.

Fragrant. Almost too much.

The rose of Sharon is blooming. My pruning helped with its shape. I tip pruned new growth in spring and I fertilized with tropical and hibiscus granules 5-4-6 in early summer. Those efforts have helped and it is better looking than last year but still not flowering as densely as I'd like.

It's okay, though. Healthy with lots of buds, just not covered in blooms the way it could be.

Winter Pruning Results

This winter during all the warmth we experienced, I did a lot of garden cleanup. One thing I did was chop back the butterfly bush in the corner of the kitchen courtyard and the caryopteris in front. I cut both down to about 8 inches of woody framework.

They both turned out well this summer, smaller and fuller and more nicely shaped.

The butterfly bush still wants to be a tall vase shaped thing, not the dense flowery form I see on other butterfly bushes.

But it fills the corner nicely without overwhelming the garden and the loose shape is a nice contrast with the stiffer and clumpier things below.

The caryopteris is just opening its flowers now in early August and it too is a much better shape after my winter pruning. The amethyst blooms are not showy. They are quiet but well formed. It does not flower as profusely as others I have seen.

It's 'First Choice' and it remains a smaller version of caryopteris, not bun shaped or dense, but looser and more natural looking. Mine is even more open and lighter colored than the nursery catalogs promise.

It is small and relaxed, the leaves are narrow and light, and the gently distributed flowers are a soft hue, so it doesn't look like much out in the gravel by the sidewalk. It's nice but not showy. 

The butterfly bush does have showy flowers, though.

I think I'll need to do the same kind of severe pruning each winter. Both shrubs had been awkward and branchy the year before, so I can see it makes a difference.

Two Gardens

Two very different Santa Fe gardens in mid summer -- one the professionally maintained S.F. Botanical garden, and the other my neighbor Andrea's garden. I visited both in mid July.

The botanical garden is of course much bigger with winding paths and wildland hills and arroyos mixed in with curated plantings. 

There is little shade, a design lapse in the original layout that would have been nice for visitors but makes for open sunny expanses and views. But there is gorgeous stonework. 

A plumbago tucked into one of the stacked stone walls was lovely. The stones give it just the shade it needs.

Elsewhere the big garden of lavenders and roses was spectacular. The pink roses had gone by, but their faded softness provided a loose counterpoint among the vivid rounded lavenders. But much of the botanical garden was suffering a bit.

Mojave sages had desiccated foliage. The bigger Mojave sages were better but still tired looking. The fernbushes looked dry and tired too. Little plantings -- pineleaf penstemons, phlox, shrubs and perennials were all little and some were stunted looking.

The botanical garden is big and complex enough to make the visual tapestry still lovely to wander in. But individual plants looked not great.

Andrea's courtyard garden was the opposite. Tiny of course, bounded by walls and fences and quite lush looking. 

Shade is abundant and cool and we had coffee and strawberry shortcake under the patio umbrella in the shelter of her spreading crabapple.

It's a mature garden, developed many years ago. It is square shaped with paths that have room to wander around central beds, unlike my narrow courtyard that makes plantings line up along fencelines.

It changes each season but the structure and maturity are established and give a sense of calm fullness.

In my yard the flagstones and deck and gravel dominate, the plants are the background. In hers the stonework is simple and secondary to all the plants around it.

She has two seating areas -- the dining table and then a conversation area, and both look settled and tucked into their shade dappled spaces.

The aspen in the photo above was a volunteer seedling that just popped up there.

Nestled into lush foliage around the garden there are other sitting areas which seem they are more for decor than sitting, but they are nice accents.

She has lots of pots tucked in all over the whole garden, and even those are full and bursting with lushness. (Somehow mine are always a spindly thing too small for its pot).

Two such different garden experiences, the one vast and sun baked with strugglers and big hills and views, the other intimate and shady and calmly composed. 

Both had lovely plumbagos -- the one at the top of this post with little plants tucked into a stone wall, and Andrea's big thick mound of Ceratostigma plumbagoides under her crabapple, so lush and green it looked like a beautiful shrub.

Two very different very nice gardens.